Sigh. It's several different kinds of wrong. The height of the Roman Empire is at least 150 years later than 50 BC, its population was still increasing, Roman anxiety about birthrates was elites anxious about aristocratic birth rates, which wasn't really a problem, as new families enter the elite. - ThreadSky

bretdevereaux.bsky.social • 80 days ago

Sigh. It's several different kinds of wrong.

The height of the Roman Empire is at least 150 years later than 50 BC, its population was still increasing, Roman anxiety about birthrates was elites anxious about aristocratic birth rates, which wasn't really a problem, as new families enter the elite.

Reposted from Joe Stieb

Summoning @bretdevereaux.bsky.social

Comments

travisklempan.bsky.social•80 days ago

Almost enough for me to reinstate my Twitter account just so I can reply directly to the ignorant sex pest.

rimidar.bsky.social•80 days ago

I mean this is also just pretty lazily concealed white genocide/great replacement rhetoric.

dalassa.bsky.social•80 days ago

Can’t have a lot of kids if your family has one praenomen.

*taps head*

hillelwayne.com•80 days ago

Ah yes, the sins of attraction and envy, says the multibillionaire who bought twitter to ban people who made fun of him

blympf.bsky.social•80 days ago

No no, he did it to save free speech. He is a free speech fundamentalist, after all.

johnbasil.bsky.social•80 days ago

it took hundreds of years of progress in Western Civilisation to invent a guy this annoying

greenclock.bsky.social•80 days ago

On the otherhand if he does think beeing wealthy makes people not have Kids that would explain his alignment with trump

bretdevereaux.bsky.social•80 days ago

That said, in 50 BC the Romans did have a problem, which was ultra-wealthy demagogic elites tearing about their Republic in the single-minded pursuit of power and dominance, which would eventually lead to the republic's collapse and its replacement with a less agile monarchy in 31BC.

roosefella.bsky.social•80 days ago

hey, that sounds vaguely familiar 2075 years later!

titaniumman91.bsky.social•80 days ago

So the problem was an out of touch and wealthy elite obsessed with issues like birthrates or maintaining decorum over maintaining truly problem solving because allowing one "side" to win was seen as a political loser? Man, that must have been rough, I sure am glad I live today and not back then

bretdevereaux.bsky.social•80 days ago

But for some reason, Musk doesn't want to talk about that one.

dankeevy.bsky.social•80 days ago

I have spent 10 minutes trying to think of a good Ghracci pun, alas.

noluckst2.bsky.social•80 days ago

To praise the Gracchi would really go against the Trumpian grain?

(I tried)

dankeevy.bsky.social•80 days ago

I won't lie, it's a deep historical cut. But true fans would know!

thraexbarbatus.bsky.social•80 days ago

He deadass wants to be "Augustus but with sons"

arramol.bsky.social•80 days ago

I sometimes used to wonder what it would have looked like if Crassus had been the triumphant triumvir. I don't wonder that anymore. In fact, I'm sorry I ever did.

marypcbuk.bsky.social•80 days ago

all the *actual* parallels in Cicero's letters that make him look so bad: funny how he never notices those!

robbix.bsky.social•80 days ago

And what was that later 'Crisis of the third century' all about?

saphroneth.bsky.social•80 days ago

My basic understanding: lots and lots of generals "simultaneously" (over ca. 50 years) realizing that the main difference between a general and an emperor by that point was that the emperor was a general who got to tell the others what to do.

bretdevereaux.bsky.social•80 days ago

That's actually a fairly good basic description, yeah. Add in some additional pressure from the Sassanids and their nasty habit of killing Roman emperors and you have a solid basic outline.

mindstalk.bsky.social•80 days ago

Wasn't there some plague and climate change in there as well?

Hard to keep the status quo when 1/3 of your population drops dead.

robbix.bsky.social•80 days ago

I'm interested in how that crisis facilitated the decline in the West and how the economy shifted from a more national to a local scale, collapse of rule of law and decline of urbanization. Seems like there are lots of lessons to draw from all that.

wonderfulstarfish.bsky.social•80 days ago

This is kind of like saying "Low birth rates were a big problem for Europeans ~1915."

chrononaut.bsky.social•80 days ago

He's Crassus and I hope he meets a similar end

seosamh.bsky.social•80 days ago

Grok, what were the fates of each of the members of the 1st Triumvirate.

bretdevereaux.bsky.social•80 days ago

That's something I try to stress to my students: nearly every Roman of political consequence in 59 is dead - most violently - by 31.

The only real 'winner' was all of four years old when Julius Caesar was elected consul; everyone else was destroyed.

brianromanchuk.bsky.social•80 days ago

Based on my memory of your Rome series, weren’t there issues of smaller independent farmers (which mattered for recruiting)? But that wasn’t a birth rate problem, rather migration elsewhere (e.g. the city).

A modern used to mass mobilisation might contort that into birth rates.

greenclock.bsky.social•80 days ago

No, we thought thst for a while but its not true?

brianromanchuk.bsky.social•80 days ago

The issue might be whether the Romans themselves mis-diagnosed the issue? (Bret would be the one with a good answer, not me.)

greenclock.bsky.social•80 days ago

They did and he has talked about it before.

brianromanchuk.bsky.social•80 days ago

My original point was the genesis of Musk’s statement - that it was a garbled version of those historical concerns. It was not a statement that those concerns/Musk’s version were valid.

maniagnosis.bsky.social•80 days ago

Uh, I rather expect that aristocratic birth rates and non-elites becoming elite are the problems he wishes to address. 😬

mathowitz.bsky.social•80 days ago

How many kids does this f*cker have?

brokentoys.social•80 days ago

out of all the problems the late roman republic had, "insufficiently humping each other" was very low on the list, if my recollection of catullus' works is at all correct

the-wrong-way-kid.bsky.social•80 days ago

Rome's problems largely stemmed from the economics of its empire rewarding patricians with slaves and plantations and the plebian footsoldier with debts and eventual loss of their small freehold farm.

greenclock.bsky.social•80 days ago

The plebian/Patrician divide was not meaningfull by the middle republic and that also is not really the Main issue that lead to romes collapse.

maaruin.bsky.social•80 days ago

This is the explanation some Roman politicians came up with when they saw an increase in the urban poor population, but modern historians came to the conclusion that the reason was: fewer Romans dying in war -> more second and third sons who didn’t inherit the farm. https://acoup.blog/2025/01/17/collections-on-the-gracchi-part-i-tiberius-gracchus/

the-wrong-way-kid.bsky.social•80 days ago

The process was over generations, but generally it amounted to being a plebian footsoldier didnt net a lot of salary on campaign and that low salary came with a promise of sharing spoils which often meant slaves that the multitude of small farm plebians couldnt use, so they were sold to patricians.

greenclock.bsky.social•80 days ago

I also have to ask which time period it is you think your describing? Because it sounds like the republic era system, but rome survived the end of thst model by 500ish years.

joannerochester.bsky.social•80 days ago

They also didn’t have problems with “pesky liberated women and their bodily autonomy” since Roman women were one step removed from slavery. And they had slaves, too.

What could have been the problem, I wonder?

bretdevereaux.bsky.social•80 days ago

While Roman society was certainly a patriarchy, Roman women had relatively more freedom of action than any other ancient society I can think of: they could hold property, sue in court, and initiate divorce, for instance.

mgraalum.bsky.social•80 days ago

I think some narrow areas like the bronze age levant had similar rights but never on the same scale

mindstalk.bsky.social•80 days ago

My impression is that ancient Egyptian women were pretty well off.
Also that we guess Etruscan women were, based on (a) art and (b) Romans and Greeks complaining about them.

bretdevereaux.bsky.social•80 days ago

I am not aware of any evidence to suggest this (we know very little about the bronze age levant) but I'm not an area specialist and so can't rule it out.

mgraalum.bsky.social•80 days ago

I did some digging, it appears that I was thinking of Sumer, where women appear to have be able to own property, divorce, work in male fields, etc.

joannerochester.bsky.social•80 days ago

Interesting! I obviously had them confused with Greece — I’ve read too much Aristophanes!

bretdevereaux.bsky.social•80 days ago

The typical Greek polis seems to have been one of the *most* patriarchal ancient societies, by contrast. Athenian women aren't really legal persons, can't hold property, etc. etc.

Collective political action by women in Athens is a joke to Aristophanes, but it *happens* at Rome (e.g. Lex Oppia).

devlinburgess.bsky.social•80 days ago

"Cognitively override the limbic attraction of hedonism and envy"?
Someone bought a word of the day calendar, I see. Too bad it doesn't mean anything.

isaiahbishop.bsky.social•80 days ago

Hmm unfortunate parallel there

okongas.bsky.social•80 days ago

Elon's (and the Republican party's) problem probably isn't with the overall birthrates either, but with the contemporary WASP aristocratic/ oligarchic birthrates.

smm570.bsky.social•80 days ago

Shocking Musk is wrong about something? What?

olivercorlett.bsky.social•80 days ago

I'm having trouble following this argument. How does the part after the second comma explain the part before. What is he getting at? You want to have a good time and envy people (wha?), so you stop having children. Non sequitur, O Caesar.

ajsoapmonger.bsky.social•80 days ago

The irony is that if you want an example of a country that is having serious problems due to population decline, Russia is the obvious candidate. But ofc that hardly supports his view that “wokeness” or women’s liberation is causing the decline…

lamebanana.bsky.social•80 days ago

Elon Musk has the intellectual capacity of a dead weasel so forgive me for not giving a flying fuck what this unelected fashist nepo baby whines about!
Also apparently his dick is hideous so there’s that!🍌

Comments

Posting Rules

Reply